


By Each Let This Be Heard

by splash_the_cat



Series: Your Place in the Family of Things [1]
Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: F/M, Jupiter Ascending Fic Challenge, M/M, Manly Feels, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5907325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splash_the_cat/pseuds/splash_the_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caine brings Stinger a drink on the anniversary of their courts martial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Each Let This Be Heard

**Author's Note:**

> For the fuckyeahjupiterascending.tumblr.com [Challenge 10: Anniversary ](http://fuckyeahjupiterascending.tumblr.com/post/137769178595/ja-fic-challenge-10-happy-anniversary)

_“Yet each man kills the thing he loves_  
By each let this be heard  
Some do it with a bitter look  
Some with a flattering word  
The coward does it with a kiss  
The brave man with a sword”  
― Oscar Wilde, The Ballad Of Reading Gaol 

The soft hum of the bees rose slow and sleepy in the late evening heat, but enough to announce his presence. Stinger stood framed in the doorway, haloed by the warm light of the kitchen and a lazy spiral of bees as Caine bounded up the farmhouse's rickety porch stairs. 

"Wasn't expecting you," Stinger said. He smelled - not anxious, really, just unsure, and while he leaned against the door frame, a study in carelessness, every line of his body radiated tension. 

Caine paused at the top of the steps. "Is this a bad time?"

"No, not how I meant it, man." Stinger stepped back and Caine eased past him into the house. "Just that I thought you and her majesty were on Ouros for the time being. Thought something might be wrong."

"Everything's okay," Caine said. "Jupiter's still there, and she's fine. I just took leave to run an errand." He opened the bag slung over his shoulder and took out a bottle. He set it on Stinger's kitchen table with a little flourish. 

"Oh, ho." The sight of it broke Stinger's stilted facade into a more genuine animation. "Where did you get that?" He picked it up and held it up toward the light fixture over the table. The crystal glittered, and the liquid inside - a swirl of pale, opalesque hue - took on an unearthly glow.

Caine grinned as he rummaged through the cupboards for a pair of glasses. "One of the many perks of my position."

"Is that what you call it?" Stinger set the bottle down and spun one of the chairs around, straddling it. He crossed his arms on the back of the chair and stared at the bottle. Caine caught a flicker of gold when he shifted his gaze up to Caine. "What's the occasion?" The question was just a touch too casual, and Caine rolled his eyes as he sat across Stinger and worked the stopper out of the bottle.

The smell hit him almost immediately: the light, spicy sweet scent of the haloada berry and under that the things that only he'd pick up: androstenone and androstadienone, oxytocin and an array of expertly tailored chemsignals designed to enhance the berry's innate properties. He closed his eyes as the complex mix of pheromones had him half-hard in a blink.

Stinger's pupils were a little blown when Caine dragged his own eyes open. "You remember the last time we had this?" Stinger pulled the bottle from his hand and poured a measure into each of the glasses before pushing one across the table to Caine.

"Not really," Caine said. "Or most of the week after." That wasn't entirely true. He didn't remember it in aggregate, but the moments that had imprinted were clear and vivid: Stinger's mouth, the rough callouses on his fingers catching in Caine's beard, dragging up Caine's spine. Stinger's gruff laugh and even rougher moans. A deep sense of contentment, of security, of belonging.

The rare pockets of leave were the only time they indulged themselves with each other. Barracks life made privacy moot, and while there was no shortage of fucking around within the squad, Caine didn't wish to press the precarious camaraderie he had with his squadmates by flaunting the fact that their Captain favored him not just on the field but in the bunks, too.

Stinger had always scoffed at his hesitation, but didn't press much. "I can think of at least a dozen captains fucking someone in their squad. It's not like it's going to destroy the Legion. And you damn well know I'm not going to cut you any slack on the field for it."

But Caine had dealt with his fair share of resentment for his skills and the deficiencies of his splicing to risk the little home he had carved out in the Legion for the comfort of someone at his back in a bunk, and so did what he could to enjoy their rare days and rarer weeks. That first bottle of haloada wine had been the last really good moment he remembered with Stinger. The next few months had been the shit-slog at Gal'rath'ak, and when they got back from that...

Caine could think of it now without panic choking him. The hole in his memory around the attack and the vivid details of the aftermath still burned in his guts and caught at his breath a little, but Jupiter knew the signs, and wound herself around him when he went distant and blank, almost comically trying to cover all of him with herself, but that was what he thought of when the memory rose instead of dread and shame - Jupiter's warmth around him, her joy in him, her fierce determination to protect him, filling him with the sense of security he'd thought he'd lost so long ago.

"Classical conditioning," she'd called it one time, entwined with him so he wasn't sure where one of them started and the other stopped, her small, slim fingers working gently, soothing through his hair and the feathers of his wings. And then she'd laughed, soft and pleased. "Google Pavlov's Dog," she'd said with an ear-to-ear grin.

Caine rolled his glass back and forth between his palms, the liquid inside sloshing gently, scattering sparkling, luminescent droplets against the inside of the glass. "I never said thank you, for that day." 

Stinger looked up from his now-empty glass, the unfocused haze gone from his eyes despite the punch of the wine. His shoulders tensed again, setting the feathers of his wings shivering. "Didn't do it for thanks. Didn't even do it for you," he said, the lie as apparent on his face as it was in his scent and the anxious rustle of his wings. "Did it because it was my responsibility. So thanks for the drink, but none of this was needed. We're square."

"Really?" Exasperation at the forced disdain Stinger pasted over his lies drove all of Caine's carefully rehearsed speeches and arguments right out of his head, and he drained his glass in one go and leaned across the table. Cupping the back of Stinger's head, Caine pressed a kiss to his forehead, then one to Stinger's parted mouth. The taste of the wine on Stinger's tongue was different; sweet and smoky, like honey simmered down to something dark and rich. The haloada berry by nature changed on the taster's tongue, and the wine itself was designed to further target the imbiber's specific taste receptors and pheromones. He licked into Stinger's mouth to get all of it before a hand slammed into his chest and shoved him away as Stinger rocked back in his chair hard enough to almost tip it over. 

He shoved to his feet, sending the chair toppling anyway. "What the fuck, man. What the bleeding _fuck_?" He held his fingers pressed to his lips, eyes huge and blazing gold. "Blood and bone, Caine. What are you thinking? Her majest-"

Licking the last taste of wine and Stinger from his bottom lip, Caine stalked around the table. Stinger hastily backed up into the wall as Caine hitched himself up onto the edge of the table, hemming Stinger in. "Her majesty knows," Caine said simply, firmly, and forced down the smile that threatened when Stinger gaped like a landed fish.

It took a few tried but Stinger managed to force out, "You told her. About us."

"Of course I told her. She asked about it, and I wasn't going to lie to her."

"She _asked_?" It came out a strangled mix of mortification and astonishment, and Stinger sagged back against the wall.

Caine shrugged. "She's not an idiot, Sting. As she pointed out, generally someone doesn't essentially give up their life for another person, and then beat the shit out of them the minute they see each other again if they're just old friends." 

Stinger glared at him, mouth pressed shut before he bit out, "Kiza and her big mouth."

"Yeah, blame _Kiza_ for making it obvious." Caine sighed, and got a rude gesture and a muttered "Fuck you," in reply.

"So what the hell was that?" Stinger gestured at Caine's mouth and then his own, then threw up his hands. "Did something happen with you and her majesty when you told her..."

"This isn't about Jupiter," Caine said, earning a contemptuous grunt from Stinger, who apparently had charged past embarrassment straight into righteous indignation. He pushed away from the wall and crowded right up in Caine's face.

"That is such bullshit. It fucking well is about her, unless she's tossed your mangy ass to the curb for being an unfaithful shit and dredging up old history."

Righteous anger of his own sang under Caine's skin at the scorn coating Stinger's sharp words. "Oh, is that all this is, Stinger? 'Old history'? So you just fucking got yourself clipped and stripped for duty and honor and responsibility, nothing more, because, what, I was just your soldier, just something fun to do on leave?" Stinger recoiled at that; before he recovered Caine surged after him, forcing him right back against the wall, where they bristled against each other. "And is old history and duty and honor why you are still sitting here in this dump, charming as it is? Is that why you've refused every offer Jupiter's made to you for the last _year_ to be her adviser, to get you back a command, or get you off Earth and anywhere you want to be?" Caine bit back the resentment driving his words and with a great effort gentled his voice. "She worries that you don't like her."

"What?" That took some of the belligerence out of Stinger. "Where does the girl get an idea like-" Realization dawned on Stinger's face. "She thinks I'm jealous?"

"No, she's not like that," Caine said. "But I think she worries that she's come between us." Caine had told her it wasn't like that at all. He knew how much Stinger liked and respected her, but his distance after the shit with Titus had weighed on her, and the more Stinger evaded her efforts to show she'd forgiven him, and held no ill will for what had happened, the harder it was, especially after she'd learned their history, for Caine to convince her that it was just Stinger dealing poorly with his guilt, and had nothing to do with her. 

"I won't stand in your way, Caine, if you want to be with him," she'd said the other night as they lay in bed, Caine just on the verge of falling asleep. It came out of the blue, so off-hand and nonchalant that Caine wondered just how long she'd been working up to it. "I just... I want you to be happy. You know that, right?" 

He'd rolled to his side and wrapped himself around her like she did to him when he faltered, burying his nose behind her ear. "As if I would ever leave you, Jupiter Jones, for anyone or any reason."

She'd relaxed against him, relief rolling off her in waves, but eventually wriggled free to sit up, eyes serious. "But what about Stinger? I mean," and she took a deep breath, "do you want to be with him too? Because I've been thinking about it, and I think I'd be okay with that." 

It had taken him a moment to get what she was saying, what she was offering, what had led him here, holding on to some tenuous hope that he could have even more in his life than that which with he'd already been blessed. 

Stinger righted his chair and slumped into it. "Oh fuck." He buried his head in his hands. "But you love _her_. I mean, you do right?"

"Of course I do." Love sometimes seemed like a paltry descriptor for the incandescent rapture Caine felt for Jupiter, the gravitational pull that spiraled him into her orbit, as if she were the sun, bringing everything warm and good into his life. "And this doesn't change that. It's just..." Frustration growled in his voice. "I _miss_ you, you asshole. And I want..." He still wasn't entirely sure what he wanted, but he knew didn't want to waste any chances. "I don't want to lose you from my life again because we can't get our shit together."

"And her majesty?" Stinger asked, flat, hesitant, suddenly and carefully distant, and Caine wondered if Stinger would ever be able to get past seeing his choice as betrayal, breaking her guileless, immediate trust in him, even though he'd had no real alternative. 

"She needs you, no matter what happens between us," Caine said. "She needs someone who'll tell her the truth. Someone who will deal with her straight, like you did right from the start. You may not trust you, but I do. And she does. Maybe even more because you did what you did to save Kiza. So go with that for now, and we can figure the rest out later."

Stinger huffed out a weak laugh between his fingers before peering up at Caine. "Yeah, okay. So what happens now?"

"I don't know. But I'd like to find out. Which isn't going to happen if you keep holed up here with your bees, wallowing in your bullshit." Caine slid off the table and held out his hand. "Your call."

Stinger stared at his hand then sort of collapsed in on himself with a sigh. He creaked out of the chair and shouldered past Caine to reach for the bottle, pouring himself a healthy slug, which he immediately tossed back. "How am I going to look her in the eye?" 

"Well, you're not going to be able to if you keep drinking that stuff." Caine stoppered the bottle and tucked it back in the bag. "Stop over-thinking it. Just come and talk to her." Caine quirked the corner of his mouth in a tiny grin, mercenary enough to use Stinger's own wallowing against him. "You owe her that much, man of duty and honor that you are."

"That's fucking low, Caine Wise," Stinger muttered, but whether it was from the wine or Stinger getting out of his own way, he looked eased. "All right then. I'll come along. For now," he emphasized. "For her majesty."

"Whatever, man." Punchy with relief, Caine slapped him on the shoulder. "Come on. I've got a ship in orbit."

"Wait." Stinger caught Caine's wrist and spun him around, pressing him to the wall. Some of his swagger had clearly returned now that he'd made whatever decision he had. "Opened haloada wine won't last more than another hour before it goes off," he said. "Be a right shame to let it go to waste."

Eyes on Stinger's, Caine leaned in and kissed him, slow and gentle, and this time Stinger drove forward, hands cupping Caine's face, thumb urging Caine's mouth open, all delight and desperation and desire. "Okay," Caine said, a little breathless when they broke apart. "We can leave in the morning."


End file.
